


break my stride

by LittleDancingRat



Category: American Psycho - All Media Types
Genre: Blood and Violence, Drug Use, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Infected!Craig McDermott, M/M, Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26275273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleDancingRat/pseuds/LittleDancingRat
Summary: Craig McDermott is sick, alone, and has a problem he can’t fix.
Relationships: Craig McDermott/David Van Patten
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	break my stride

**Author's Note:**

> (tw:: drug use, graphic depictions of violence and gore, vomiting, death, slurs: f*ggot.)
> 
> This story is set in the same universe as 'Behold the Depths of Depravity and Decay,' yet is not canon to the storyline. This is more of a one-off character study for Craig McDermott's character.

_“Last night I had the strangest dream! I sailed away to China, in a little row boat to find ya!”_

Craig walks down the empty streets of New York, again. He’s always alone. Always cold, alone, _singing_. Usually he’s drunk, enjoying himself, high, on cocaine, but this time it’s different. This time he’s sober. 

Back at Limelight, the guy’s wanted to party, have fun. McDermott wanted to have fun too, take the stress off his back, loosen up a little, but then he sneezed. He sneezed and blood coated his white Armani sleeve. 

If it had only happened _once_ then he wouldn’t have been so freaked out (years of having to put up with it numbed him), but it happened again, and again, and _again_. Each time he felt a tickle in his sinuses, he would blow out a cloud of red onto a napkin, into his suit, and then once onto the table. 

That’s when he left.

He left because he knew something was wrong, because everyone was staring but didn’t _say_ anything. Didn’t even mention it. Didn’t make a side comment that their champagne glasses had splotches of red on it from McDermott’s diseased body.

Disease. 

Craig is sick. He’s very sick and he’s known this for quite a while now. The drugs and alcohol all finally caught up with him, they’ve been waiting in the shadows to pounce for years, he’s sure. Ever since college ⸺ hell, since _highschool_. 

Craig is twenty-seven years old, and he’s sick. Very, _very_ sick. 

_“And you said you had to get your laundry cleaned, didn’t want no-one to hold ya. What does that mean? And you said…”_

Craig McDermott is twenty-seven years old, and he’s sick, alone, and walking down the near empty streets of New York, singing to himself while having to constantly wipe away the blood that keeps drizzling past his upper lip. Craig McDermott is twenty-seven years old (soon to be twenty-eight), he’s sick, alone, and trying to reminisce on a past he couldn’t care less for. Craig McDermott is twenty-seven years old, he’s sick, alone, and shivering, letting his tears fall freely in the cold.

_“Ain’t nothin’ gonna break-a my stride, nobody gonna slow me down, oh no! I got to keep on movin’...”_

Craig McDermott is sick, alone, and has a problem he can’t fix. He has a lot of problems he can’t fix. One of them involves his best friend, the one that didn’t show up at Limelight tonight. Though, Craig shouldn’t have been surprised at his absence; he went with a strange group of people, not the ones he’d normally have gone out with. The faces are really a blur at this point. He thinks he remembers seeing Brent Taylor, Will Davis, and some other big names at P&P: nobody he cares about.

Craig just wanted to go out to go out. Get away from his apartment. Do a few lines of _Draino_ and take off to the streets like before, singing and dancing without a care in the world. Then he was reminded of his own mortality, and with a lot of willpower, decided against doing _any_ drugs. 

Though Craig drank. 

He drank and drank and drank until he couldn’t count to ten in his head, and by that point he had started crying, sobbing, yelling at the bartender to grab him something stronger and then he smashed his glass on the floor and left.

The worst part is that Craig can’t remember if that had happened at Limelight or Fez. 

Did he even go to Fez? 

_“Ain’t nothin’ gonna break-a my stride, I’m runnin’ and I won’t touch ground, oh no! I got to keep on movin’...”_

A junkie. An alcoholic. A _faggot_. 

That’s what he was. That’s what Craig McDermott _is._

_“You’re on the road and now you pray it lasts, the road behind was rocky, but now you’re feeling cocky!”_

And now here he is, curled over in the alleyway behind 35th street, throwing up blood and blue shit into an empty trashcan. He’s pretty sure that this is the place he’s supposed to die, next to some sleeping homeless man, while his insides turn out and scatter all over the pavement.

_“You look at me and you see your past, is that the reason why you’re runnin’ so fast? And she said...”_

Far away, he can hear people laughing, yelling, then a loud crash and it’s silent. 

Craig leans up against the wall, opposite of the homeless man, one he swears he’s seen before, but he doesn’t care. He can’t stop his mouth from moving, the singing just _pouring_ from his vocals and it doesn’t feel good, not like at Tunnel, not like _before_. The music is loud, making his headache worse than it already is, thumping against his skull as he rests it back against the brick wall, staring ahead of him vacantly.

The Bum is awake, sitting upright and staring right back at McDermott, a blanket blocking out the light from a nearby street lamp, curtaining his face in a shadow.

“The fuck do you want?” Craig grounds out, blood and something thicker running down his chin, mixing with the snot and tears. “You think I’m on your level? Cause I’m not.”

The Bum is… laughing. Laughing at Craig.

_“Ain’t nothin’ gonna break-a my stride, nobody gonna slow me down, oh no! I got to keep on moving.”_

He blinks. 

The singing didn’t come from Craig this time.

It came from the homeless man.

“What, do you think you’re funny? Wanna fucking copy me, play games, kick me while I’m down?” He’s shaking with rage, tears brimming his eyelids, blurring his vision, hands balling into fists.

“I think you’re pathetic,” then he breaks out into another laughing fit, raising a blanketed hand to point at McDermott.

_Ain’t nothin’ gonna break-a my stride, I’m running and I won’t touch ground, oh no! I got to keep on moving…_

He’s standing up now, the music continues to play, pulsating through his body, chanting. Craig wants to smash his head against a wall, make it stop. Make the music stop.

“Is it too much to ask…” he bends down, picking up a rock laying untouched in the middle of the alley, “for you to keep your stupid, fucking mouth shut?” 

_Never let another girl like you, work me over…_

The Bum slowly raises his head. Their eyes meet in a small moment of understanding. There’s fear there, somewhere. They know that this is supposed to happen, everything in their lives led up to this somehow, some way. There was no going around it.

_Never let another girl like you, drag me under…_

Craig smashes the rock over his head, instantly knocking the other man to the ground, blood cascading from his temple like a waterfall. Hitting him again with it, he hears bones snap, cave in, and Craig knows that if he keeps cracking into the same spot that the man’s head will be nothing but a mush of flesh. 

He pulls back, tossing the bloody rock off to the side, staring at the purple and pink blotchy skin. On the opposite side of his head, an eyeball hangs loosely from its socket, staring at him, condemning him. 

Craig puts his hands on the wall above and raises a leg, stomping what was left of the Bum’s head into the jagged concrete below. As he raises his foot on the last few, good kicks, his shoe starts to stick to the mushy flesh, like stepping in wet, soggy grass; that’s when Craig finally stops. Cracks and small hisses come from where his brain leaks out of his ear, pink bits being forced through the hole and dripping in clumps down his neck.

_If I meet another girl like you, I will tell her…_

The music has disappeared. Everything has. 

He can only hear the sound of his own panicked breathing and his heartbeat slapping against his ribs. 

_‘Don’t play coy, Craig._ ’

Someone had said that to him once, urging him on, trying to make him do something he’d regret.

Craig regretted a lot of things.

_Never want another girl like you, have to say, oh…_

But Craig was also very good at doing what other people told him. He doesn’t _think_ before doing something. He just does it. It’s always been that way.

Falling back against the other side of the alley, he lets out a wail, blood soaked hands coming up to grab at his hair, claw at his temples. 

It’s happened again. 

He did something bad. He didn’t mean to do it, he swears he didn’t want this. The piece of shit just wouldn’t shut up. Wouldn’t keep his dirty fucking mouth closed, sticking his nose in business it didn’t belong.

_Ain’t nothin’ gonna break-a my stride, nobody gonna slow me down, oh no! Oh no! I got to keep on moving…_

He’s stupid. He’s a fucking idiot. 

Craig’s dying. He’s dying and he doesn’t know how, he doesn’t _understand_. 

Breathing isn’t an option anymore, bile is sitting in the back of his throat, clogging his windpipes. It falls from his nose, ears, he can even feel it leaking from his eyes.

Craig’s drowning. He’s drowning and he can’t swim.

_Ain’t nothin’ gonna break-a my stride, I’m runnin’ in a warm touch ground, oh no! I got to keep on movin’!_

People pass by. They turn their heads the other direction, as does Craig. 

On his death throes, vision blacking in and out, he stares at the bloody rock he’d used to smash a man’s head in. 

_‘What does Craig want?’_

Craig wants David. 

He just wants something he can’t have. 

And now he’s being punished for it, drowning in his own sickness.

Craig is sick. 

Craig McDermott is twenty-seven years old, he’s sick, he’s pathetic, he’s _alone_ , and he’s dying.

That’s the worst part, he thinks. 

He’s dying alone, nobody to comfort him, nobody to run their hands through his hair and tell him that everything will be alright in the end.

Nothing.

And he thinks that that’s how it was always going to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't do drugs kids.


End file.
